David Miller > Quotes

“We need political authority, then, because it gives us the security that allows us to trust other people, and in a climate of trust people are able to cooperate to produce all those benefits that Hobbes listed as signally lacking in the ‘natural condition’.”
― David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“Our word ‘idiot’ comes from the Greek idiotes which was the term used to describe someone who lived an entirely private existence and took no part in the public life of the city. Most of us today are idiots, then, inasmuch as we fail to exercise our political intelligence.”
― David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

“his real point is that in the climate of fear that would follow the breakdown of authority, the kinder, more trusting, side of human nature would be obliterated. And from what we know of human behaviour when people are caught up in civil war and other situations in which their very survival is at stake, he seems to have been right. We”
― David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction